Zenith
by alcyonejonquil
Summary: The entrance to Vault 76 snaps shut behind her, leaving Enid alone to fend for herself in the post-apocalypse. After twenty-five years spent in a secluded, artificial environment. It goes about as well as anyone would have expected.


They... well, they... hadn't looked at her all that much. At first.

She'd watched them scuttle about from the little cabin she'd sought shelter in (perched on the side of a hill) and tried her best to be quiet. After that first day's deception, she resolved to keep away. No strolling down, chill as you please, to say hi. Not yet. Not until she'd gotten a bead on what was going on.

And thank the Lord Almighty she'd even stumbled upon this rundown scrap of a house. She'd barely been holding on to her wits – zipping up her jumpsuit, running out of the steel and concrete into the deafening light while screaming for someone she knew, _anyone_, _where are you, people?!..._

And hearing that cog-shaped door _screech_ shut behind her with the weight of the lead in her veins.

As if the Vault knew it'd spat out its last inhabitant, the last pioneer to go out and "rebuild," further, further, never to come back.

Which, in all honesty, it probably did, the damn thing.

She was forced to move away from it, eventually, and trudge her way down towards… civilization? Had to fight a few roaches for ownership of that relatively comfy place to sleep. Roaches the size of cats, that jumped at her and stung like a bitch, but you know. That's why they'd taken all those mandatory survival classes. They'd been well-prepared for "the unexpected effects of radiation exposure on the outside world." So much training, it kicked into gear immediately as soon as she had to deal with one of those abominations. Sure it did! Easy as pie, that little tussle, thank you.

Then, the waiting, what else? A sheep separated from the herd, no clear directions, no help in sight. Might as well have been chained to the bed.

Waiting, waiting, everything they'd already done in that fucking hole was _wait_. Wait for freedom, for fresh air, for the sun on their pasty skins.

(She'd been so young when she'd entered, she almost couldn't remember the sun—)

You'd be inclined to believe that would be over once she'd gotten out.

Nah; again, hours and hours and hours of just... sitting around, with the noises of the boundless, uncaring _nature_ drumming in her ears, which, by all accounts (that is, according to all the novels and leaflets and magazines she'd foraged like an animal and filled her drawers to the brim with back underground) should have been nice, soothing. Yeah, maybe for them who wrote the stuff. Let those guys spend twenty-five years deep in the bowels of a mountain with the indomitable Homo sapiens as the sole threat, then drop them riiight in the middle of the _Double-u-Vee_ wilderness, see how they like it.

That's not to say her existence so far had been all sweetness and roses at the hands of her fellow humans. They left her. In her room. Alone. That oughta be telling enough. No one'd had the grace to entertain, for a single moment, some thought along the lines of "Hey, it's the morning of the 23rd and Enid's not here with us, why don't we go see if she's hit her head falling out of bed and passed out, or otherwise managed to finally throw her alarm clock so hard it broke or something?"

_L'enfer, c'est les autres_ an'all that.

Anyway, hurry it up, miss, on to the important bits, if-you-please:

Did she feel in any way different when it started? Good question. The answer being, not as far as she could tell. That would have been preferable, wouldn't it? Her body might at least have given her a warning, for the sake of the years they'd spent together. Oh well.

It went like this. On the third day, supplies were dwindling. She gathered up the courage to go and explore what, in the past, must have been the town of Flatwoods.

Empty faces; that's what she found. Children, grown men, women. The silhouettes she'd spotted from above, coming and going between the trees. They were exiting through boarded-up doors, gazing into long-destroyed shop windows, talking soundlessly amongst themselves. Paying her little mind. Still, she walked with them.

She could swear, on everything she holds dear, she heard a faint rumbling in the distance next. "In the distance?" As in, at the edge of the forest, or some such?

Hah. No. Try "most likely all the way to goddamn Washington D.C.".

And they all stopped in their tracks, in and around that tiny plaza in front of the church, and turned towards the noise.

(Appropriate. Pity that day in October had been a Saturday, not a Sunday, it would have been perfect – they were all wearing their clean, fancy clothes from years long gone. _Sunday clothes_. She must have stuck out like a sore thumb, in skintight, garish blue and yellow. What poor mom would have said…)

And then?

And their eyes slid to her, without fail, before wandering to the massive cloud on the horizon, then they all got weightlessly lifted off the ground and rose up, up, up, until they reached the heavens and could go no higher.

There.

* * *

**Dedicated to _AcidKraken_ for being, unquestionably, one of the most wonderful people I've ever had the good fortune to meet. Also, it's thanks to her that I've fallen in love with Fallout again, so. ❤️**

**This... was a little experiment I thought up, inspired by my playthrough of 76. I can only hope it worked.**


End file.
